I say the final test of religion at
that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done,
not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have
discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that
awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done,
_by sins of omission_, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For
the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the
proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means
that He suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired
nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him,
to be seized with the spell of His compassion for the world. It means
that--
"I lived for myself, I thought for myself,
For myself, and none beside--
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died."
Thank God the Christianity of today is coming nearer the world's need.
Live to help that on. Thank God men know better, by a hair's breadth,
what religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is.
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